Narnia, OZ, Hogwarts and Atlantis…. Jealous?

You couldn’t possibly know the terrible comforting warmth that descends upon you in those few, haunting, silent minutes after the shooting has ended. The spree and your fury spent, the odd coppery smell of blood mixed with tear gas and gun powder residue hangs heavy in the air.

At first I want to say its eerie, the quiet, but that’s not right – it’s peaceful. It’s like no other peace I’ve ever felt, I don’t think people realize just how noisy life truly is, until it stops, the noise outside and inside your head…. the noise that drives you, coaxes you, ordering you to make them pay, make them all pay….

Alright, I’m not quite at that level yet…. I just happen to have an active imagination. But I’m getting close…come, come with me on a journey and together we’ll balance on the line twixt sanity and madness – a place where black is white and up is down, a place where all is so wrong with the world Gingers are in power…. a place where things are so completely twisted beyond all comprehension that doctor’s care about their patients and answer questions and provide solutions… sounds interesting right, a place you’d like to visit perhaps – well forget it – doesn’t exist, further away from reality than any Narnia, or Oz, less possible than Hogwarts or Atlantis… allow me to explain.

First off, you know what I’m not? That’s right, a Doctor…. yet both my moron medical “professional” not only have different advice, opinions and suggestions – which are at times, in direct opposition to what the other one says…. that being said they appear to take a sadistic pleasure in telling me again and again, my treatments, options and directions are completely my choice. Let me say this again, I’m not a doctor – yes I give free breast exams down at the clinic on weekends but by the letter of the law no, I have no medical degree as such, I’ve never successfully completed all the requirements one finds necessary to add the big D, little r before my name.

BUT, it’s all up to me, hey I know – maybe what I’ll do is print out a bunch of treatments from webMD.com – strip my cardiologists to the waist, staple the various treatments to their flabby white torsos and then while hammered on crown royal and horse tranquilizers I will fire coloured darts through a peruvian blow gun deep into their pale fleshy hides. Just about as scientific and equally mystifying to me as what options to pursue based on their suggestions – seems just as hit and miss as their treatments have been so far.

When’s the last time you had occasion to visit your mechanic with some funny noise coming from your engine and he pops the hood then asks you what he should fix? How about your dentist? Ever have him belly up beside you and drop a big mirror in front of you and say, well really it’s your decision what I do next…. OH OK, how about for a start you get your dental hygienists foot out of my mouth… oh it’s not in my mouth well why not, it feels like everything else in the room is, so naturally I just assumed….

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture, they do agree on some things, for example the both agree on the fact that I can’t be cardio-verted or “shocked” because undoubtedly I have a number of blood clots in my system. Hey fun fact, any one of which could give me a heart attack or we could also spin the big stroke wheel and see what I win, paralysis, loss of speech, blindness… who knows… they don’t.

Look I realize they don’t have a crystal ball nor x-ray vision, but really do their opinions have to contradict each other? One puts me on a new drugs called MULtaq, he says it’s got great studies, very effective, better than previous drugs – so I go on it – the second cardio says un-uh, there are a bunch of studies coming out in which it’s been proven to cause total liver failure requiring emergency transplants…. Ok next scenario – so doctor 1 again tells me to drop the amiodarone as it is a very serious drugs with numerous documented side-effects, since I have been on it and the Fib came back, it’s obviously not working, he told me to drop it immediately, why take it if it isn’t working? Good point, makes sense, smash cut to doctor 2, totally wrong! he has patients who’ve been on amiodarone for 25 years, the drug works well, it’s been around so long, they know what they are dealing with and what to look out for, he would have no qualms about taking the drug himself…. so he puts me back on it.

I’m loading the guns……

Believe me, I could go on most likely for infinity but who has time for that? Here’s where we stand, correction, where I stand – the metaphorical centre of a road in Pamplona right before they release the bulls, but that’s beside the point. They’ve adjusted my medications and we will try that for 3 to 4 weeks, giving the new doses a chance to “load” my system and get working. If that converts me, good times – I guess I just go on taking the medications until parts of me explode from chemical toxicity. If that doesn’t work, at the end of these 3 or 4 weeks, I start on warfarin or coumadin, to break up all the clots in my system, then I go into the hospital so they can do a full cardioversion, not just the quick and dirty “shock” we’re talking the whole enchilada, the big full meal deal where they stop my heart and try to re-boot.

Basically they will electrocute me, to death (if you have anyone on the “other side” you want me to say hi to, let me know) – I get all the pain and trauma of the electric chair without the joy and satisfaction of having done whatever terrible crime they kill people for these days… not even a last meal. If I convert back into sinus rhythm great, we wait and see what happens, if I don’t well here’s where they differ again.

Doctor one says we are getting into dangerous territory, the heart can only tolerate so much burning and scar tissue before it is damaged beyond repair, that’s why he suggest we start thinking about a pacemaker…. Doctor two says utter nonsense, the heart is a stupendously strong muscle and he personally has done the procedure at least seven times on one patient – I was super jazzed to go for the new high score but quickly thought better of it. He said there are always risks blah blah blah, don’t sue me…. he thinks we do another ablation. (I didn’t say maybe he needs to read up a bit more on the procedure if he’s having to do it seven times before he gets it right) that’s not exactly a towering example of your skills.

The three biggest worries here are 1. clots and their BFF, strokes and 2. because I’m in this atrial flutter, fibrillation, the heart has been beating much faster than usual, now the heart being the super muscle it is, well – what happens when you make a muscle work harder, that’s right it grows, so the longer I fib the more damage is being done to my heart. With the heart it’s the one muscle where bigger isn’t better – unless you are The Grinch, then you can safely grow your heart three times on Christmas morning and still feel well enough to carve the roast beast. and 3. Not beating properly means I’m not getting proper circulation, I already mentioned this, but wonky circulation means I am cold, really cold all the time, and my tissues are not being properly supplied with blood and oxygen. Now again I know I said I wasn’t a Doctor, but I’m quite sure I read somewhere blood and oxygen were pretty basic requirements of life, that and Japanese Schoolgirls.

So I’m cold, tired, out of breath, weak, angry, scared, disenchanted, frustrated, grumpy & looking for work. Pretty much not only the ideal man, but the ideal employee as well. All in all things are pretty damn rosy from where I’m sitting.

Yes Chris, but you still have your sense of humour…. WHO SAID THAT? You’re on my shotgun list now….

I was going to go into graphic detail about the carnage left in the wake of the Shotgun of Medical Justice but I shelved it, who knows it may make another appearance. Whew, this was a pretty long post. If you made it this far, you need a hobby, surely you have something better to do…….

Have a Great Day

I don’t mean any disrespect for my doctors they’ve been pretty great, I’m just frustrated.